The deibhidhe is an Irish form. In English it is more
often spelt deibide, but you still have to pronounce
it jayvee. (The Irish language uses a lot of unlikely-looking clusters of
consonants, and most of them seem to be either pronounced as "v" or
not pronounced at all. Exercise: pronounce the name of the poet Medbh
McGuckian.)

Here's a deibhidhe about the time I spent working
in the oil industry:

No, Watercolour...

Of a subject dire I sing:Reservoir EngineeringI could never understand -A queer and quaggy quicksand!

I was sent away to learnAbout it in climes northern,But while at Herriot-WattMy zeal did not run riot.

All the years I worked in oil,My conscience was in turmoil.I floundered through the fogLike a bogged-down wan warthog.

My colleagues would make a fuss.Those strata - were they porous?It bothered me not a whitHow the drill bit grey granite.

The mysteries of the rockMade me feel like a pillock.Underground movements of gasAlas, my mind canít compass.

I donít work there any more,Redundancy my saviour.Not a tragedy at all -A small but welcome windfall!

There was a TV advert for an airline some years ago which featured the
following exchange between two passengers on a flight to Aberdeen. Large
outgoing American: "D'you work in oil?" Weedy-looking bespectacled
Brit: "No, watercolour." Hence the title. Herriot-Watt University is
situated near Edinburgh and offers week-long courses on such arcane subjects as
Reservoir Engineering, cleverly sugaring the pill by making them coincide with
the Edinburgh Festival.

As for the form, each stanza has 4 lines of 7 syllables each, rhyming aabb,
and both of these rhymes are deibide rhymes i.e. in
the first line of each rhyming pair, the rhyming syllable is stressed, and in
the second it is unstressed.

The form also demands an aicill
rhyme between lines 3 and 4 i.e.
the word at the end of line 3 rhymes with a word somewhere in the middle of line
4 (as whit/bit, gas/alas above).

Finally, there must be alliteration
between the last word of each stanza and the preceding stressed word (as quaggy
quicksand, welcome windfall above).

This amounts to a lot of constraints
for the fourth line to satisfy in the space of only 7 syllables. I found this
form a tough one, except when writing the last stanza. Perhaps I was getting
into the swing of it by then.

Deibide Baise Fri Toin

A similar name, but not much in common with the common-or-garden deibide,
apart from being Irish. I don't know how to pronounce this one, or the
literal meaning of its name, but here's what the verse form looks like:

Against Vegetation

Move! Withoutdoubt it helps to get about.Except for triffids, a plantcanít.

Poor daisies!In peril as cow grazes,prospects of survival nothot.

Such foddercan't flee even a plodder;inferior to the least beast.

No better,the shiftless non-go-getter,potato sat on a couch.Ouch!

The syllable count is 3, 7, 7, 1 and it rhymes aabb. It is essential to the form that the a rhymes have two syllables, and the b
rhymes have one syllable. There are a fair number of Irish forms - some
of them with longer and more unpronounceable names - and most of them
stipulate the type of rhyme as precisely as this.